Wickerwork / Christian Lehnert ; translated from the German [and with introduction] by Richard Sieburth.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Lehnert, Christian, 1969- author.

Contributor:

Sieburth, Richard, translator, writer of introduction.

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Nature--Poetry.

Nature.

German poetry.

German poetry--21st century.

Genre:

poetry.

Nature poetry.

Poetry.

Physical Description:

171 pages ; 16 cm

Edition:

First Archipelago Books edition.

Place of Publication:

Brooklyn, NY : Archipelago Books, 2025.

Language Note:

Parallel text in German and English.

Summary:

"An eel in a pond, the open eyes of a moth at dusk, red jellyfish fraying on a tide, the way a hazel tree learns from the falling of snow to scatter her pollen. For Christian Lehnert, 'the tiniest of specificities' are both occasions for poetry and invitations to look beneath the surface of the natural world. In these poems, radical attention is paid to the visible and invisible minutiae that surround and sustain us, from unicellular amoebae to the blue whale, from fallen walnuts to the sound of wind in grass. 'How find them again--all these fires / within matter / all these bright flashes of speech?' asks Lehnert, in an ode to flowering mullein. His lines, themselves glinting fragments, depict this rediscovery in the mind of the poet and offer a lesson in attunement. He notes that certain trees have the power to remind us that the growth and protean spirit of things is never in doubt. Here, growth feels possible, necessary, a fact as simple as it is divine. This selection of Lehnert's recent work reveals, by turns, a poet-naturalist, a devotional poet steeped in theological conversations, a student of Rilke, Basho, and Thoreau, and always--in each delicate couplet--an ear open to the speech of silent things"--Inside cover flap.

Notes:

Poems first published in German in the collections "Cherubinischer Staub : Gedichte" and "Opus 8. Im Flechtwerk."

ISBN:

9781962770248

1962770249

OCLC:

1452504880